When I wrote about the major Hollywood film Noah starring Russell Crowe as the arkmeister that is being released next month, I suggested that the filmmakers would have a tough time making Yahweh acceptable to the many religious people whom they need to buy tickets because there is no question that the story reveals him to be a monster. I said that I would be curious to see to what extent the filmmaker would go to sanitize Yahweh.
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The Ugandan president recently signed into law a bill passed by parliament that criminalizes homosexuality and imposes harsh penalties on homosexuals. This action was strongly urged by some American evangelicals who have taken their anti-gay hate message global, looking for countries that might be open to their message given that the people back home are increasingly rejecting it.
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To follow up my earlier posts on the debate (see here and here), after the two main talks, we had two further talks by each that allowed for some back and forth, beginning at around the 1:04 mark (with an intermission between 1:27 and 1:35) and where the speakers repeated and reinforced their arguments and tried to rebut the other. There was some repetition, especially on the part of Craig. I will not go through it in order but summarize the main points.
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In his opening remarks that I discussed yesterday, William Lane Craig made the standard opening move within the college debate framework for those speaking first and arguing the affirmative by framing the question in the most minimal way, thus making it harder to counter. He said that all he was seeking to show was that modern cosmology provided “significant evidence in support of premises in philosophical arguments for conclusions having theological significance”.
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I watched the debate Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig held on Friday, February 21, 2014 on the topic of god and cosmology. I thought it was a good one and I will spend a few posts exploring some of the issues for the benefit of those people without a physics background who may have been a little fogged by some of the technical issues that came up.
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On Tuesday, February 25, 2014, Central California US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled that a veterans memorial monument that the city of Lake Elsinore proposed placing in front of the city’s minor league baseball stadium showing a soldier kneeling in front of a cross was unconstitutional because it violated both the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause and the Establishment and No Preference Clauses of the California Constitution.
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Carroll gives both short and much longer versions of his recollections of the debate and that the recorded version should be available online shortly. (Reader cafink was physically present and you can read his reflections here.)
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The media has gone gaga over pope Francis, portraying him as charting a new course for the church. They did not seem to notice that he has not done anything to change the actual policies of the church, merely presenting a kinder, gentler face.
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While much attention has been placed on the rise in numbers of the religiously unaffiliated and outright disbelievers in a god, Mitchell Stephens looks at a less-publicized aspect and that is that even those who still consider themselves as believers now think of their god in very diminished terms.
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The debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig on the topic The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology that I wrote about before is being held this evening at 8:00 pm Eastern time. At Carroll’s blog you can find out more details and how to access the live stream of the event.
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